Soul Sex Excerpts | Page 3

are self-imposed. Change thought
from being your master to being your powerful servant, a tool of your
liberation. Turn your thinking on, and turn it off, when you want to.
You have the power over what you think. You also have the power over
how you think about things. Connect with your higher self for guidance
and direction. You are your mind. Your mind is freedom.

The Third Freedom: HEART
“Hearts made sweet by surrender
to each other.”
—Al Link

Heal your broken heart. Open your healed heart. Give and receive
love easily, naturally, spontaneously, and unconditionally. Discover you\
r
lover within. Love yourself. Accep t yourself. Forgive yourself. Know
that you are worthy of love. Acknowledge and welcome the love of
others. Dare to be the great lover you are. You are your heart. Your
heart is freedom.

The Fourth Freedom: SOUL
“Souls made sweet by surrender to God.”
—Al Link

Your body, mind, and heart are windows to your soul. Your soul
transcends space and time. It is outside of cause and effect. Your soul is
complete and perfect. When you communicate with your higher self,
with God and Goddess, you are communicating with your soul. Your
soul has your body, mind, and heart within it. Your soul is what you are.
Your soul is The Soul. Your soul is freedom.

Tantra helps you explore these four freedoms and make them your
reality, not just in your relationship, but in all areas of your life.

What Is Tantra?
“Tantra is where sex is transformed into love
and love is transformed into
the higher self.”
—OSHO

Tantra is a Sanskrit word that can be translated to mean “weaving.”
A spiritual belief system that originated in ancient Hindu and Buddhist
cultures of India and Tibet, Tantra views the material world as a manifestation
of the Divine. Everything is accepted and connected—woven

Soul Sex: Tantra for Two, Pala Copeland and Al Link, New Page Books 2003 - Excerpts

8
together. The apparent division between body and spirit, between matter
and energy, is an illusion. By consciously uniting perceived opposites
(male and female, light and dark) human beings can transcend
dualism and know that all is one.

The numerous schools of Tantra employ various forms of meditation,
sacred sound, breath control, secret ritual, and prayerful thought
as aids to enlightenment. Some also incorporate sexual activity as a
means of spiritual awakening. The union of ordinary woman and man
becomes the eternal coupling of Shakti (Divine Mother) and Shiva (Immortal
Spirit). When connected in sacred, ritualized sex, our human
bodies—mirrors of the cosmos—rejoin the wholeness of essential reality.
Thus, Tantra weaves together sex and spirit. In much of Western
society, Tantra has become associated primarily with this sexual–spiritual
component. Most of the religious aspects of traditional Tantric sects,
their complex philosophies, rituals, and deities are not included in this
modern interpretation. Tantra has become a generic term encompassing
a wide range of sacred sex practices. This is how we use the term
Tantra in our work and in the title of this book: as an integration of s\
ex
and spiritual growth.

British scholars and travelers returning from India first introduced
Tantra to the West in the middle of the 19th century. Foremost among
them was Sir Richard F. Burton (1821–1890), co-founder of the Kama
Shastra Society, through which he privately published his translations
of the Eastern texts The 1,001 Arabian Nights, The Kama Sutra, Ananga
Ranga, and The Perfumed Garden. Given the surface prudery of the
time, these works provoked a hostile response.

However, during the same century, a series of Western sacred sex
practices emerged. Each of these interpretations was given a unique,
and often esoteric-sounding name. Most well known is Karezza, which
was conceived by Alice Bunker Stockham, an American doctor who
studied Hindu Tantra yoga in India. In Karezza, the sexual elements of
Tantra are applied within the framework of Christianity. More recently,
Westerners who flocked to India seeking wisdom during the late 1960s
and early 1970s encountered Tantra at the ashrams of gurus such as
Osho. Inspired by the healing power of these sexual secrets, pioneers
such as Margo Anand, Nik Douglas and Penny Slinger, David and Ellen
Ramsdale, and Charles and Caroline Muir brought the message to
Europe and North America.

Tantra is particular to India and Tibet, but other cultures, such as
the Taoists in China and the Cheyenne in North America, also developed
sacred sex traditions that encouraged the intentional cultivation
of sexual energy for spiritual growth, longevity, and creativity, as wel\
l as

Soul Sex: Tantra for Two, Pala Copeland and Al Link, New Page Books 2003 - Excerpts

9
enhanced pleasure. Now, there are varieties of Tantric sexual practice
evolving all